Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Copabanana" data-source="post: 660176" data-attributes="member: 18958">My parents came from different worlds. My Dad born of Scottish immigrants. My maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish, and fled oppression from the Pale.My mother's parents' traditional culture as much defined us as did her desire to escape it, because my grandparents in the early years were always with is.My Dad's family had extreme prejudice against us. And I looked like my Mother. It doesn't seem like much, now, but then it was.My Dad was one of 7 children. I was the only grandchild with brown eyes. His mother would often remind me of this, as something special. What she meant, really, was special in the sense of stigma. I knew it. Always.Last night I googled "beautiful Jewish women."  I had first googled "beautiful old Jewish women."  Only Barbra Streisand came up.When I looked at the beautiful Jewish women, I saw that the features that I have felt make me ugly, many of these women shared, too.For a while now I have been googling "beautiful old women."  I want to see if there is a chance for me, if at some point I come back from the dead.Me too, Cedar.As a child, me too, Cedar. I could not sustain it for myself alone.  To have a beautiful environment is for me one of the highest ideals, but I have a hard time still creating it and sustaining it for myself.Yes, Cedar.I have felt Cinderella my whole life.This image evoked my relationship with my therapist.Yes.What a heavy, heavy burden. The weight of everything. ours. In my case I believed I caused all the pain, and thus, it was mine to fix. And if I could not, I deserved to die, I guess, as I have been doing now, it seems.A death sentence, for me. To fail, over and over again.This reminds me of a psychological concept "Soul Death."  The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, and her other books. There is a similar term, "Soul Murder", used by a man named Shengold.  I read these books in the late 80's, I think. They describe what happens to children psychologically when treated with systematic abuse and neglect.I think I will go back and look at these books.What comes to mind now is that I have taken up and begun to do the work of a perpetrator on myself. My crime: Look at my life. My mother is dead and I have had to face the pain of a having lived a lifetime without her, my sister hates me. My father and brother, degraded, destroyed and dead.And most of all, my son. My love for him was supposed to redeem everything. It clearly did not.It is hard to live in this new world of mine. Where there is no hope that my love can do anything good at all with my son. Or that anything at all will work to fix or to change him. That I must live for the rest of my life, possibly, watching him struggle and flail and suffer. And do nothing at all. Because there is nothing at all that I can do that will help him.It is a curious concept for me that I would learn to do this for love of him or myself.  'To learn a new way of being for the sake of my son, whereby I watch him flail. I watch him fail himself. I watch his disappoints and struggles. And I do nothing. Possibly for the rest of my life. And longer.To love myself enough that I will learn a new way of being for my own sake. When I hate myself so much. Because I could not love my mother through her life and because my love failed to heal my son, enough, whereby he could love himself. And I would not love my father, and he destroyed himself. And my brother, dead. And I did not care.Curious are both parts of this: to let him be who he is and can be. Because of love.To love myself enough just because.I am happy for this, Cedar. Will you tell us, I hope, a little bit about her visit. I like her so much.Yes. This my own crime too is similar. That I could not love them enough to make them better or the relationship better, so that I could survive in it.  Instead, I was killed off in each one, each relationship. Until I said I had no more lives to give.And now with my son, I prefer to die and get it over with. Because I cannot choose to say "no more." There is no leaving here. So I must die.My therapist, SWOT.I could not tolerate leaving him completely.I am afraid I will never go back to work in prisons. People who work in prisons are mean to me. They are mean to everybody, but if I face it, they are particularly mean to me.I am wondering if this means I should never go back my old work. I have been trying to go back to work for a year and a half. I have not gotten far. I have not even sent in paperwork, to try, even though there has been a prison 45 minutes from my house, desperate for people.And I cannot get myself to send in the paperwork so that I will even be considered. I would like the money. I have spent so much money in these past 3 years.3 years it has been since I jumped off the ledge with my mother. That makes me think of Masada, I think it is called. The ancient Jews of Masada, if I remember correctly, were trapped by invaders. And they jumped off a cliff, one by one, all of them. To maintain their beliefs and integrity and to not submit. That is what I remember of the story.I fear I am not strong enough to return to work. On the other hand, it would be nice to return to work to prove to myself that I still am who I am. Regardless of how they treat me. That I am strong enough to be who already I am. And have been.Love can turn into hate. I think this happened when I stopped seeing my father. I came to hate him. Maybe I always did.I am here with my son, in this same place.  I am still here.But on some level, she did, it seems. And cared enough about herself to not take the medicine that she knew would make her manic.How brave is your daughter.Good for her, Cedar.And good for you, too. You know now that it was not you or something you did or did not do.Cedar, are we not all in this same boat?This is the problem with us, Cedar. Remember that saying, out damn Spot. Or did I make it up or corrupt it.I will try another metaphor then. We are always afraid, it seems we are the donkey, and the tail will be pinned on us. Original Sin.The whole world is full of people who try to make us the donkey, so as to not be the donkey themselves. And every time, it seems, that somebody succeeds, I feel that I am being accused of the crime I know I committed.And I never have figured out what the original crime was, except that I failed completely and miserably in making my parents happy and whole. And I failed with my son too.But now I have an answer when I accuse myself.I am not a donkey.  I am a vulnerable, foolish ridiculous flower. With only four thorns, maximum.How could I have ever hoped to save anybody, when I could not yet take care of myself. I had no railing to protect me. Nobody bothered to muzzle the sheep.Foolish, foolish girl. Who had so much love and hope and trust and want and fight within her. From the start.  That she tried. And tried. All alone, she tried. Defeated from the first, she tried. Seeing only with love. She tried.  Nobody there to protect her.I will care for her. I know I can. I will draw railings. I will draw a muzzle, for when she accuses herself. I will embrace her and stroke her when she is sad. This poor foolish flower. She is mine. And I will love her until she dies.I have to go soon because I want to google Beautiful Old Jewish Women, and see if my picture comes up.This touches me so, Cedar. Is it any different for any of us, Cedar?A mission statement if I ever heard one, Cedar. For me, too.And this part, too. With my son. It is what it is.Yes.Thank you Cedar and SWOTPS I have a sock knitting book by the Twisted Sisters.</blockquote>

Verification